Bill Clinton's last-minute
pardon of Marc Rich, the shadowy commodities trader who fled to
Switzerland in 1983 to avoid American justice, was a shocking abuse
of presidential power and a reminder of why George W. Bush's vow to
restore integrity to the Oval Office resonates with millions of
Americans who otherwise disagree with the new president's politics.

Unchecked by any other
branch of government, the president's authority under the
Constitution to pardon anyone charged with federal crimes is meant to
be exercised with great restraint to correct an injustice or to
further some societal good. Bestowing undeserved beneficence on a
fugitive accused of evading $48 million in taxes and illegally
trading with Iran in oil during the hostage crisis is hardly what the
Constitution's framers had in mind.

Speaking from his new
outpost in Chappaqua, N.Y., Mr. Clinton has said he used his pardons
to restore rights to individuals who had "paid in full," and were
"out long enough after their sentence to show they're good citizens."
That description may fit some of the other recipients on his final
pardon list. But it surely does not describe Mr. Rich or his former
partner, Pincus Green, both of whom fled the country to escape the
judicial process. There is a huge difference between pardoning
someone who has already paid all or part of his debt to society and
pardoning someone who has avoided adjudication.

We are unimpressed by Mr.
Clinton's assertion that Mr. Rich's attorney, Jack Quinn, a former
White House counsel, made "a very compelling case" for a pardon. Mr.
Quinn, after all, will presumably be paid well for using his White
House connections. True, Mr. Rich's application also had the support
of Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel, but that may be due to
the vast extent of Mr. Rich's charitable giving in his country.

Mr. Clinton was fully aware
that pardoning Mr. Rich, the ex-husband of Denise Rich, a prominent
fund-raiser for the Clintons and the Democratic Party, would carry a
distinct taint and invite irate protests from federal prosecutors
like Mary Jo White in Manhattan. That is probably why he kept it a
secret that he was considering a pardon, bypassing the normal process
in which the Justice Department vets pardon applications and submits
them to the president with a recommendation. Small wonder that Ms.
White and other current and former law enforcement officials are said
to be livid. Mr. Clinton's irresponsible use of his pardoning
authority has undermined the pursuit of justice.

Pardons
on the Sly

EDITORIAL

January 25,
2001

Anger over Bill Clinton's
abuse of the pardoning process mounted yesterday, as well it should.
This page has criticized Mr. Clinton for his last- minute pardon of
the fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich. But a broader look at Mr.
Clinton's final pardon list makes clear that the outrage extends well
beyond the undeserved leniency for Mr. Rich. We are particularly
troubled by the numerous instances in which Mr. Clinton granted
pardons or commutations without proper consultation with federal
prosecutors, often to reward friends or political allies or gain
future political advantage.

Consider, for example, Mr.
Clinton's decision to commute the sentences of four Hasidic men from
New Square, N.Y., who were in prison for defrauding the government by
inventing a fictitious religious school and using it to attract
millions in government aid. The commutations were granted after Mr.
Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, met privately
in December with supporters of the men, whose politically active sect
had overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton in her victorious Senate
campaign. Mrs. Clinton denies any responsibility for the president's
commutation decision and denies even knowing that commutation would
be discussed. But her presence at the meeting surely underscores her
interest in accommodating these constituents. The United States
attorney in New York, Mary Jo White, vigorously opposed the
commutations, which she learned about only at the last minute.

Politics rather than a
careful weighing of the merits also appears to have been the deciding
factor in Mr. Clinton's pardon of Edward Downe Jr., a contributor to
Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats, who pleaded guilty in the early
1990's to insider trading and was sentenced to probation and stiff
fines. Prosecutors in Ms. White's office learned of the pardon
decision last Friday ó too late to effectively register their
objections. Similarly, William Fugazy, a confidant of several
politicians, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, and a
prominent figure in civic affairs, was granted a pardon for his
perjury in a bankruptcy proceeding over Ms. White's objections. Mr.
Fugazy's lawyer said he had successfully sought help from an unnamed
political figure to carry his request to the White House.

In the same vein,
Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, served as a
courier who forwarded pardon information to the White House for Susan
Rosenberg, a former member of the Weather Underground serving a
lengthy sentence for her role in an explosives and weapons case. Mr.
Nadler says he took no position on the pardon, which was opposed by
Ms. White's office.

Of course, some people
close to the president had no need for special access to gain his
attention. Mr. Clinton's pardons of his brother, Roger Clinton, who
served time years ago on cocaine charges, and of Susan McDougal, who
went to jail for refusing to answer questions about Mr. Clinton's
Whitewater dealings, were clear distortions of the pardoning process
to help friends and family.

The president's power to
grant pardons is absolute, and it is meant to correct injustices or
perform a civic good. But the properly intense furor over Mr.
Clinton's pardon of Mr. Rich led Senator Tom Daschle, the Senate
Democratic leader, to suggest that Congress might need to review the
president's unilateral power to dispense pardons. That seems an
unnecessary assault on a fundamental constitutional power. But such
Congressional concern should be a signal to future chief executives
that in this matter, as in other aspects of presidential judgment,
Mr. Clinton is not a role model to follow. President Bush can help
restore trust in this important presidential responsibility by
committing himself to abide by the traditional process of Justice
Department review before a pardon is granted.

The
Pardons Look More Sordid

EDITORIAL

February 9,
2001

The hearing yesterday
before the House Committee on Government Reform made it clearer than
ever that President Clinton's decision to pardon Marc Rich, the
fugitive commodities trader, was an inexcusable abuse of the
president's absolute clemency power. The hearings produced
information ó unproven but disturbing ó suggesting that
Mr. Clinton may have discussed the pardon with a Democratic
fund-raiser and was aware of objections to the pardon by White House
lawyers. More Congressional inquiries lie ahead. Based on the
testimony yesterday they are warranted, but Congress should avoid the
temptation for endless inquiry and reach an expeditious account of
the interplay between fund-raising and the pardons.

Whatever the outcome,
Congress ought to remember that these abuses by a particularly
insensitive chief executive are not a good reason to change the
Constitution to curtail the president's powers to grant pardons. The
Rich case itself suggests that future such abuses can best be avoided
by pursuing meaningful campaign finance reform and by tightening
government ethics rules.

Campaign finance reform,
while not rendering bad presidential judgments obsolete, would help
address the root problem involved in this and so many of the Clinton
administration's other scandals ó unequal access to the White
House. Like those of Michael Milken and others championed by wealthy
Democratic contributors, Marc Rich's pardon application was sent
directly to the White House and did not go through the usual Justice
Department channels. His former wife, Denise Rich, who invoked her
right not to incriminate herself in declining to testify yesterday,
wrote Mr. Clinton on behalf of the pardon application. She also wrote
big checks to the party, to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign
and to the Clinton presidential library. Strategic campaign donations
were also made by other pardon seekers.

The involvement in this
case of Jack Quinn, the former White House counsel, was equally
unseemly, placing Mr. Clinton in a terrible predicament. Mr. Quinn's
feeble defense of the pardon's merits has only fanned the outrage in
recent weeks. His argument that Mr. Rich was improperly charged with
crimes in an essentially civil matter should have been made in a
court of law two decades ago. The White House is not an alternative
judicial venue for fugitives.

A more scrupulous attorney
would have recognized and avoided the inherent conflict between his
loyalty to the president (essentially his former client), on the one
hand, and his obligation to Mr. Rich on the other. The most
charitable way to characterize Mr. Clinton's behavior in the case is
to accept that he also failed to recognize the conflict and assumed
his former lawyer was still in the business of providing him with
straightforward analysis on a legal matter, which he clearly did
not.

Mr. Quinn testified that he
had advised Eric Holder, then the deputy attorney general, that he
was approaching the White House on Mr. Rich's behalf, but that is no
substitute for following the rules other clemency seekers, who may
not have donated a million dollars or may not have hired the
president's former lawyer, must follow. For his part, Mr. Holder had
no good explanation for his failure to learn more about the merits of
the Rich case from prosecutors in New York before declaring his
neutrality on the issue. He simply said he did not pursue the matter
because he thought Mr. Rich's case was such a long shot on the
merits.

Mr. Quinn violated the
spirit of executive orders barring senior White House aides from
lobbying the government for five years after leaving office, and
clearly helped grease the pardon. As Representative Christopher
Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said: "This is not a pardon problem
as much as it is a revolving-door problem."

Even at a time of
heightened cynicism in Washington, it was breathtaking to hear Mr.
Quinn testify that he knew he did not violate the Clinton
administration's lobbying rules because he wrote them and provided an
exemption for communications "regarding a judicial proceeding." This
is a standard exception to ethics rules that allows former government
attorneys to oppose the government in court, because that does not
entail influencing former colleagues. For a former White House
counsel to rely on this exception to press the president for a pardon
takes an unusual ethical insensitivity.

Mr. Clinton's
irresponsibility was also breathtaking, and has added millions of
Democrats to the rolls of those who regard him with bitter
disappointment. The best way for Congress and the Bush administration
to prevent such outrages in the future is not by tinkering with the
Constitution but by following Justice Department guidelines on
pardons, tightening ethical rules and passing campaign finance
reform.

Get
Rich Quick

EDITORIAL
OPINION

By Maureen
Dowd

February 11,
2001

WASHINGTON - Oh, heck,
let's just impeach him again.

With Monica Lewinsky, Bill
Clinton subverted the legal system and sullied the presidency. With
Marc Rich, he perverted the legal system and may have traded a
constitutional power for personal benefit.

He can't argue that our
interest in this transgression is a violation of his privacy.

The Clintons ran a
cash-and-carry White House. They were either hawking stuff or carting
it off.

Beyond Denise Rich's $3
million fund-raising lunch and personal donations ó $450,000
to the Clinton library, more than $1 million to Democrats, $10,000 to
the Clinton legal defense fund, $7,375 for Clinton furniture ó
let's hope Bill Clinton has a Swiss bank account set up by Marc
Rich.

Otherwise, it would not be
worth sliming the Constitution, his legacy and his party.

Bill and Hill are
tornadoes, as James McDougal memorably observed, twisting through
people's lives and blithely moving on.

But this time, they may not
dance away from the wreckage. The egg may have hit the fan, as
Congressman Steven LaTourette put it at the Congressional hearing on
the Rich pardon.

This time, maybe the user
was used. Bill Clinton was manipulated by a man who made billions
manipulating foreign markets. Marc Rich bought a pardon with the
money he made betraying America.

Bob Dole once asked where
the outrage was. It finally materialized in, of all places, Dan
Burton's hearing room as Denise Rich sent a letter taking the Fifth.
The committee examined e-mails, telephone records and letters that
provided a rare road map into a chic sewer of money and influence, a
far cry from the salacious bodice-ripper peddled by Kenneth
Starr.

Eric Holder, former No. 2
at Justice and the latest casualty of the Clinton twister, offered
lame and contradictory excuses about why he failed to rebut the
argument of Jack Quinn, once Mr. Clinton's White House counsel and
Monica apologist. Meanwhile, Mr. Holder was being touted as a
possible attorney general in a Gore administration, where Mr. Quinn
might be chief of staff.

First Mr. Holder said he
did not make a fuss because he did not know who Marc Rich was. Then
he said he did not make a fuss because he assumed a pardon would not
be granted to a known fugitive.

At the hearing,
Representative Christopher Shays scorched Mr. Quinn: "Mr. Rich traded
with Libya when we had the embargo, he traded with Iran when we had
the U.S. hostages being held captive, he traded during the 12 years
with Iraq when we had our conflict, he traded grain with the Soviet
Union when we had an embargo, he traded with South Africa with the
apartheid government when we had that embargo. . . ."

At the hearing, Democrats
who had decried the virulent partisanship and wacko behavior of Dan
Burton - including his re-enactment of the Vince Foster death by
setting up what he called "a head-like" thing in his back yard and
shooting into its mouth with a .38 - were echoing the complaints of
Mr. Burton and fellow nutbag and Clinton hater Bob Barr.

Even some black Democratic
lawmakers, Bill's biggest defenders, were appalled. Representative
Elijah Cummings said that when he returned to Baltimore's inner city,
people would ask him "about a guy who evaded taxes . . . when they
can barely afford to go to H & R Block to get theirs filled out.
. . . And they are going to say, `Mr. Cummings, how can that happen
when the police are arresting us for simple things?' "

The potent combination of
Mr. Rich's money and the access of Mr. Quinn and Denise Rich to the
White House was destined to be a winner. As long as they could stay
"under the press radar," as Mr. Quinn put it in an e-mail to another
Rich lawyer.

Ms. Rich and her pal,
another close friend and Clinton benefactor, former D.N.C. finance
chairwoman Beth Dozoretz, pushed the pardon, sometimes monitoring
events from Ms. Rich's ritzy lair in Aspen.

"POTUS," as one e-mail
reports, phoned to buck up the girls from time to time with
encouraging updates. If only those pesky White House lawyers would
drop their objections, he was ready to green-light the
pardon.

Ms. Rich also buttonholed
Mr. Clinton at a White House reception on Dec. 20, snatching him away
from Barbra Streisand for a pardon tête
a-tête.

In the world of the
Clintons, people who need people are the luckiest people in the
world.

Another
Pardon Disgrace

EDITORIAL

February 22,
2001

The disclosure that Bill
Clinton's brother-in-law received large fees from two beneficiaries
of Mr. Clinton's last-minute pardons and commutations can only deepen
the public revulsion over the former president's decisions. It adds
to the disturbing impression that Mr. Clinton's actions may have been
influenced by friendships, politics and financial
contributions.

Mr. Clinton asserted
yesterday that neither he nor his wife had been aware of the payments
to Hugh Rodham, the former first lady's brother, by the two men. He
said they were "deeply disturbed" by news of the fees and called on
Mr. Rodham to return the money, which he was reported last night to
have done. The former president's statement was welcome but left many
questions unanswered about Mr. Rodham's improper lobbying role. The
matter must be thoroughly investigated by Congress and the Justice
Department.

At issue in the new
disclosures were two acts of clemency that had already seemed
puzzling. One involved Glenn Braswell, a Los Angeles businessman, who
was pardoned for his conviction in 1983 on mail fraud and perjury
charges. After his pardon was announced, federal prosecutors in Los
Angeles complained that a separate inquiry into possible money
laundering and tax evasion might be hampered. The other beneficiary,
Carlos Vignali, had his 15-year prison sentence commuted by Mr.
Clinton after a campaign waged by some leading public figures in
California. Mr. Vignali had been convicted of involvement in a
drug-dealing operation.

The American people are
entitled to know whether Mr. Clinton was in any way influenced in his
actions by the lobbying of Mr. Rodham, who is a lawyer. Mr. Clinton's
statement yesterday left unaddressed whether he and Hillary Rodham
Clinton knew of Mr. Rodham's interest in the two cases. The
Associated Press reported that Bruce Lindsey, a Clinton White House
aide, was aware of Mr. Rodham's involvement. Whether or not it was
legal for Mr. Rodham to receive fees and press a client's case with
his brother-in-law and golfing partner, it was certainly unethical
for him to do so. If Mr. Clinton knew of Mr. Rodham's role, he must
bear full responsibility for failing to instruct his brother- in-law
to withdraw from the cases immediately.

Mrs. Clinton, now a senator
from New York, has her own obligation to inform the public of what
she knew. She has said she knew nothing of the case of Marc Rich, the
fugitive financier pardoned by Mr. Clinton, and was not involved in
the decision to commute the sentences of four members of a Hasidic
sect in Rockland County. But the latest revelation can only hurt her
standing and complicate her efforts to break free of the lax ethical
standards of her husband's White House.

Mr. Clinton has argued that
he decided all the pardon and commutation cases on their legal and
humanitarian merits. It is now up to Congress and the Justice
Department to determine whether other factors were involved as
well.